Chapter 6 – It Seems He Went Way Overboard

 

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“Thought I could use the confusion to smoothly infiltrate this place. But, I guess you’re not goin’ let me do that so easily, as might be expected.”

The one appearing after pushing the debris aside was a young man with casual, trimmed, brown hair who was wearing black clothes. He was grasping a metal pipe with the length of an arm in his hand, its end pointed at Renya.

Going by the fact of his body not sporting any bigger injuries, it was very likely that he had used the fallen rubble as cover to infiltrate the fortress when Shion caused a part of it to collapse. Renya didn’t know how he did it, but he had apparently waited for his chance to strike while concealing himself in a gap of the mountain of debris.

“Now that it’s come to this, I’ve got no other choice. I mean, everythin’ and anythin’ will be over once I butcher you!”

“You’re…” Renya’s words were interrupted by a gunshot.

Renya tried to nimbly dodge the bullet released from the rifle’s muzzle, but the instant he identified the kind of projectile it was, he switched from evasion to defense, held his palm out towards the incoming shot, and deployed defense magic.

Countless lead bullets struck the barrier he had erected, but got stopped after slightly biting into the defensive layer.

“A buckshot, huh? Looks like you used your brain a bit.”

If he had used a normal bullet, Renya would have been able to easily deal with it by dodging or repelling it with his katana. But, where a buckshot was concerned, repelling all the fragments with a blade would prove to be difficult, and when it came to evasion, he’d have needed to evade a far bigger area than he was used to. Moreover, Renya wouldn’t know the trajectories of the multiple fragments even if he managed to repel them with his katana as they were simply too numerous. In such a case, it was fairly likely that the dragonoid soldiers would be hit by the shrapnel, even if Shion might have been fine.

“In exchange, their penetrative power visibly fell, though,” Renya muttered, but observing how one piece of the buckshots, which his foe kept shooting, penetrated his defensive barrier, forcing him to knock it down with the back of his katana, Renya widened his eyes slightly.

The feedback he got from the blade felt far more powerful and intense than the times when he flicked off normal bullets with his katana.

As Renya closely scrutinized the hole opened up by the fragment he had knocked down, the shooter bragged, “This one here has a choice between buckshot and slug bullets. And although it’s just two choices, it’s already a pain in the ass.”

“I see. It’s certainly a troublesome weapon. Anyway…” Renya pointed at the gunner’s face while sheathing his katana, “…Who were you again?”

“Haah?”

Forgetting to even launch his next attack, the gunner cried out in plain shock and astonishment. Ignoring that, Renya pressed a finger against his forehead, and began to eagerly try recalling something.

Shion walked up next to him, and timidly asked Renya, “Renya, I don’t know that guy, but does that mean you don’t know him either?”

“No, that’s not it. It’s a fact that we’ve met once in the past and had a light skirmish, but…you see, the guy called Karen or something, who showed up after this guy, had too much of an impact, resulting in me forgetting this guy’s name. Well, he’s the guy who launched an attack on our camp when we went to the demon country to rescue Emil…”

“Oh, right. You mentioned someone like that. Umm…did we ask for his name? Or did we not?”

“Did I tell you? Or did I not? I don’t remember either to be honest…”

Unrelated to the gunner who had started to tremble with his face bright red, Renya and Shion folded their arms and brooded over this issue while tilting their heads.

“Even if I did ask you, for argument’s sake, I don’t remember it anymore, seeing how I can’t recall it at the moment.”

“He’s a Lost…his ability is to reproduce guns or weapons…and umm… It’s that. The feeling when you can’t remember something no matter what you do. It’s not even on the tip of my tongue.”

Renya started to lightly worry that he might be starting to become senile, but in reality, Karen’s appearance in military uniform back when he was squaring off against the gunner in front of him had left too strong an impression on Renya’s memories, resulting in the opponent he was now fighting being erased out of his mind.

After readily stopping to ponder about it, Shion lightly tapped Renya’s shoulder, “Give it up, Renya. The fact that you can’t remember it must mean that it’s insignificant anyway.”

“Really? Well, you do have a point, though.”

“Don’t give up, damnit!” The gunner shot at the feet of the two while yelling as if throwing a tantrum.

Him not aiming at them was evident to Renya and Shion from the get-go, and thus they remained standing still without even trying to dodge. The ground burst open with bullets exploding at a place further away.

“Especially the living national treasure over there! You fucker say you forgot my name after loppin’ off my friggin’ hand!? Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ with me, you piece of shit!?”

“Even if you tell me all that…”

Renya didn’t intend to slight an opponent he had cut, but to his own regret, the presence of Karen was simply too big. Compared to the shock of having encountered an opponent who was the first person ever since he came to this world capable of taking him on at a fairly equal level, the guy in front of him, who fought by materializing modern weaponry from Renya’s former world, didn’t leave much of an impact, no matter how Renya looked at it.

“Sorry, but honestly, who were you again?” Renya asked while quickly bowing as he started to feel bad about not being able to remember his opponent.

In response, the gunner slammed his rifle on the ground, and screamed while pointing a finger at Renya, “Kiyomizu Kazuya! At least remember the opponent you cut with your own goddamn katana!”

“Oooh, now that you mention it, that was your name, wasn’t it? I remember it now.”

Renya clapped his hands together after finally recalling the information that had been nesting in the deepest recesses of his memory. He nodded many times over with an expression as if a load was taken off his mind. Kazuya got even further pissed off by Renya’s behavior, but Renya didn’t consider things that far.

What bothered Renya above that was Kazuya’s hand. He was sure that he had completely severed it before, but now it had returned to its former state and functionality as Renya could tell from the rifle shots.

But, it didn’t seem to have completely returned to its former state. Unlike the somewhat rough and knobby hand of a guy, Kazuya’s hand had transformed into one with somewhat slender, womanly fingers.

“Hey, what happened to your hand?”

“I ain’t got no obligation to explain it to a bastard like you!” Kazuya spat out while picking up the rifle and fixing his stance again.

Given that Renya was only slightly curious about the fate of Kazuya’s hand in the first place, it wasn’t as though he insisted on knowing the reason, regardless of whether the hand would have returned to its previous state or changed into its current state.

“Oh well, whatever. Rather than that, do you actually grasp your own situation?”

“Hah?”

“You’re all by yourself right now, you know?”

The demon king’s army that surrounded the fortress had been mostly annihilated after being on the receiving end of Renya’s crazy chain of magic attacks. Currently, only Renya and Shion were in front of Kazuya, but he was encircled by the dragonoid soldiers, including their hero Albert.

Seeing how they held an overwhelming advantage in numbers over Kazuya, Renya judged him to be no more than a road bump at this point, even if Losts posed a certain level of threat. No matter how much Kazuya had access to the weapons of his previous world, he was outnumbered under the current circumstances and the most he could hope for was things ending with him being beaten black and blue after getting ganged up upon.

“So you’re sayin’ you going to use your numbers to surround me, eh!? Totally sounds like somethin’ a villain would do!”

“Do you remember what you’ve been doing just a little while ago? Are you okay over there? Your brain still working?”

Renya was deeply marveled by Kazuya having the gall to talk about numerical superiority when he tried to slaughter a small group of dragonoids with a huge army.

Ignoring Renya who continued to ponder whether Kazuya was actually following the logic of it being okay since it was a big army ganging up on a smaller group, and not a group ganging up on a single person, Kazuya pointed at Renya, declaring with a loud voice, “Let’s conclude this with a duel between generals! Kazuya vs. Renya! I request a duel against you!”

“Say, are you perhaps dumb? There’s no way I’d go along with something like…” Renya was about to immediately turn down Kazuya’s request for a duel as there existed not a single merit in accepting it, but then support for Kazuya’s demand appeared from an unexpected place.

“You won’t accept it, Renya-dono!?”

“Stay out of this, lizard hero,” Renya calmly rebutted Albert’s words which expressed his surprise.

But, Albert went on without paying any attention to Renya’s rebuke, “Not accepting the request for a personal duel by the enemy general is a disgrace for any warrior.”

“What a terribly outdated view. Or wait, is that kind of thinking possibly mainstream in this world?”

Renya’s former world also had an era where etiquette mattered during wars. Renya wondered whether something like that might possibly exist in this world as well, but as far as his own experience in this world went, he couldn’t recall a single instance where he had encountered such old customs.

When he turned his eyes at Shion to get confirmation just in case, Shion violently shook her head at once.

“Though I won’t claim to know all of the dragonoids’ customs.”

“I just confirmed it moments ago, but it looks like the dragonoids follow an old way of thinking. Because they place importance on individual prowess, they’d always accept a duel thrown at them,” Kilie supplemented.

Renya remained silent for a while as if brooding about something, but then, after a single nod, he tapped the scabbard of his katana once.

“Well, why not. I’ll play along. The things you’re saying and doing are totally messed up, but so far as it goes, we come from the same world.”

“Did you get infected by their stupidity, Renya!?” Shion cried out in surprise, apparently not having expected that.

“Coming out of your mouth, that’s rich,” Renya grabbed hold of Shion’s head and quickly clamped down on it, but in reality, Renya followed a certain line of thinking with this.

Certainly, if they were to beat up Kazuya while relying on their numbers, it would be much easier to defeat him compared to Renya having to do it himself, but even Kazuya was endowed with abilities outside the norm of people from this world as a Lost. It was clear that Kazuya would put up a desperate resistance once he perceived that all hope was lost for him. In such a situation, it was quite likely that the casualties among the dragonoids would become quite high.

Once he realized that, Renya started to believe that accepting Kazuya’s request for a duel, no matter how ridiculous it might be, would be an elegant solution to lower the risk to the dragonoids in the vicinity. Renya had forgotten Kazuya’s name, but he didn’t forget his ability.

If Kazuya had randomly planted directional anti-personnel mines to make them blow up at an opportune moment, without caring about damage to himself, not only the soldiers, but even the ordinary citizens, whose protection he had entrusted to Giliel, would very likely suffer heavy casualties.

“I’ll accept the duel. Other people aren’t needed for the battle between you and me, right?” Renya asked with a pretense of being nonchalant about it while releasing Shion’s head.

After a little pause, Kazuya answered, “I see, so that’s what you’re playin’ at, huh?”

At a glance, Renya and the others had an overwhelming advantage, but in reality, that wasn’t necessarily true. Kazuya had apparently noticed this fact, and twisted his lips into a nasty smile while listening to Renya’s request.

“Personally, I get fired up when I’ve got a gallery watchin’ me.”

Hearing that answer, Renya placed his left hand on the katana’s hilt, and drew the blade slightly. This was a precaution in case Kazuya turned down his request while prioritizing to cause damage to the vicinity.

In such a situation, Renya would need to cut down Kazuya with one stroke before his ability allowed him to lay waste over a wide area. He would need to shorten the distance to Kazuya as quickly as possible, even while knowing that it’d be reckless to do so. If Renya also took into account that even that would be within Kazuya’s expectations, Kazuya’s ability to materialize modern weaponry was actually troublesome enough that Renya had to resolve himself to suffer a certain extent of injury. After all, Kazuya could materialize explosives wherever he wanted.

Renya alone would be able to deal with his ability by dodging, but if his allies were around, it’d make this particular ability quite a problem to handle.

“But sure, it’s fine with me. Have those, who wish to fall back, do so now.”

Kazuya responded generously to show his composure, but Renya could faintly perceive a nervousness tinging Kazuya’s voice when he answered. Renya thought that Kazuya had reached this decision after calculating that it’d be easier to take on Renya in his normal state instead of pissing him off by causing damage to the vicinity and thus having to deal with an enraged opponent. And him making that kind calculation clearly showed that Kazuya was thinking about his future course of actions even if he couldn’t win against Renya here. Renya suspected that he might have prepared some kind of means to escape.

“Kilie, please have the dragonoids take refuge somewhere and keep an eye on them. Should some of them, and especially Albert, try to get away, restrain them, no matter what method you have to use.”

“Leave it to me, Renya-san.”

“I’ll stay here, Renya.”

Given that Renya had already anticipated Shion saying so, he cast a fleeting glance at Kazuya without showing any intent of trying to persuade her otherwise. Noticing that look, Kazuya cast his eyes down as if telling Renya to do whatever he wanted.

“Shion, make sure to devote yourself to defense so that you won’t get injured. I’ll take care of that guy.”

“Got it. I’ll act as something akin to a witness.”

After making sure that Shion properly understood her role in this, Renya shifted his eyes to Kilie who was in the process of leading the dragonoids away, and lastly he shifted his look back to Kazuya who was obediently waiting for the people to leave.

“I suppose we’ll start once the dragonoids are gone. Get your weapons and traps ready while you can. I’ll approve of you doing at least this much as a thanks for allowing me to get rid of this handicap.”

“Thank you kindly. But, no need to tell me since I’m in the middle of gettin’ ready ‘nyway.”

Giving Kazuya time was always connected to allowing him to prepare traps, underground weapons, and other constructions, but even so, Renya regarded the departure of the people, who would have disturbed his attention out of worry over their safety, a much bigger advantage. In reality he wanted Shion to leave as well, but he had already predicted that she wouldn’t agree to his request either way.

If it’s possible, I’d like to get rid of Kazuya in this place.

While thinking that, Renya waited for Kilie and the others to finish their withdrawal.

 

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The battle was started off by Kazuya’s directional mines blowing up. Accompanied by fierce explosions, countless shrapnels and blast winds headed for Renya and Shion’s bodies. Renya nimbly dodged the area of the mines’ effect while Shion picked up a rock big enough to hide her own body from among the rubble at her feet, using it as a shield against the incoming fragments and shrapnel.

Naturally, that was no feat Shion could have pulled off by just relying on her natural strength. Hence, it was proof of her having slowly learned how to use the body strengthening she had acquired a while back.

Renya moved while praising her for this growth in his mind. At the same time, he was being chased by lead bullets cutting through the air, following the rhythmical firing sounds of Kazuya’s rifle. The bullets, which flew off in the distance without even grazing his body, posed no threat to Renya whatsoever, but they managed to keep him away from entering a range that would allow his katana to reach Kazuya.

Kazuya’s ability being so annoying was the biggest reason for that. The ability to inexhaustibly create weapons itself was already plenty troublesome, but what made his ability even more of a pain was Kazuya’s ability to set up the created weapons in a place of his choosing, to some degree.

Because of this, Kazuya could unleash a barrage of directional mines at Renya without almost any delay, allowing him to keep Renya out of a certain perimeter around him.

Suddenly the rapid firing by the assault rifle stopped for a moment. It didn’t seem as though the rifle had run out of bullets, but Kazuya still tossed it away without a care, produced a new gun without even watching how the assault rifle turned into light particles before vanishing, and resumed his bullet shower.

Even though he doesn’t have the issue of running out of bullets, he apparently can’t prevent the gun from overheating due to continuous usage, and because his aim gets messed up from that, he needs to switch his weapons, Renya analyzed.

And Renya noticed another change from their previous battle as he tried to somehow get closer to Kazuya. He narrowed his eyes slightly, staring at Kazuya. Each time he attempted to somehow draw closer while weaving his way through the gaps in the barrage, some kind of scent filled the surroundings, making his consciousness waver vaguely.

It only happened for a split-second, but it gave Kazuya enough time to fix his aim or create a new gun, becoming the very reason why Renya didn’t manage to enter Kazuya’s bosom, despite being on the verge of doing so.

“Renya! Watch out! I don’t know what it is, but I can smell a weird scent from somewhere!”

Apparently not intent on joining the one-on-one battle between the two men, Shion had conducted herself so as to not get in Renya’s way. And yet, she gave him that warning after the scent had even reached her place behind a piece of rubble she had pulled out herself while being ready to rush out at any moment.

Renya wondered how he was supposed to watch out for a scent that was drifting through the air, but that didn’t mean he had no hand to play. While dodging the bullets as usual, he silently swung his hand, causing a gust of wind at the spot where Kazuya had been standing until now.

That gust turned into a vortex as if to surround Kazuya from all sides, transformed into a torrent, and sucked in everything around it, just to whirl the things within its area of influence all the way into the upper skies.

“Fuck! Magic, eh!?”

Seemingly in desperation even while cursing, Kazuya materialized several anti-personnel mines outside the tornado and caused them all to explode without any particular aim, thus scattering shrapnel and explosion blasts around himself. The dust whirled up by the detonations and the smoke created by the mines were drawn into Renya’s pillar of wind, obstructing Kazuya’s sight for a moment.

“Damn it…”

Him being unable to see meant he couldn’t suitably deal with whatever was going on outside. And even though his impediment lasted but a short moment, it still proved to be a fatal opening against an opponent like Renya.

“Guu…gahaa!”

Kazuya didn’t know just how it had crossed through the shower of shrapnel, but the blade stabbed at him from outside the tornado pierced through Kazuya’s left chest, defying the wind vortex altogether, and penetrated outwards through his back.

At the same time, the tornado vanished and Renya appeared, still in a posture of having thrust his katana, on the other side. He quickly pulled the blade out of Kazuya’s chest and immediately leaped backwards. The bullets fired as if to chase after him opened up small holes on the ground.

“No way! His heart should have been stabbed with this!?” Shion cried out in surprise while peeking out from behind her piece of rubble.

Renya’s katana should have accurately penetrated Kazuya’s heart. And yet, Kazuya was firmly standing on his feet, holding a newly materialized rifle without looking like he was about to die, despite the rivulet of blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Ouch…that fuckin’ hurt, motherfucker!”

“Did you stop being a human? That attack just now being limited to you only feeling some pain actually puts me in a bind as well,” answered Renya, fleetingly lowering his eyes at his blade while warily keeping an eye on Kazuya.

Blood and grease, both proof of him having stabbed Kazuya’s body just now, still clung to the blade. That proof and the feedback he got back at the time of the stab were evidence to Renya that he hadn’t been tricked by some sort of illusion magic, but if that was true, he didn’t understand the reason why Kazuya was still standing on his feet.

“Is your heart in another location?”

It wasn’t as though no precedent of such an occurrence existed. Even in his previous world knew stories about hearts being on the right side of the chest and such, and even though it was unlikely that Kazuya was such a rare exception, it still entered the realm of possibility.

Renya was also bothered by the low amount of bleeding. Assuming he had pierced Kazuya’s heart, it wouldn’t be strange for a lot more blood to surge out of the wound. And although there was enough blood to wet Kazuya’s clothes around the wound, the quantity seemed low when considering that the blade had supposedly stabbed through the heart, a place where a lot of blood gathered.

“Who knows. Did you think I’d simply reveal the trick behind this like a good boy?”

“Actually, I did, yeah,” Renya nodded with a serious look.

That caused Kazuya to fire his rifle while looking quite pissed. The bullets fruitlessly flew off into the distance without even grazing Renya’s body.

“Isn’t it a cliché for guys like you to brag about the details at a time like this?”

“Wouldn’t that be way too convenient for you!?”

A loud explosion occurred at Renya’s feet, accompanying Kazuya’s yell, but at that time Renya had already moved to another place. The origin of the explosion was a bomb which Kazuya had suddenly materialized, but seeing how he couldn’t even put a scratch on Renya’s body with it, Kazuya clicked his tongue lightly.

“Why can’t I hit you despite goin’ this far!?”

“‘Cause I’d die if I got hit by these, no?”

“You’d die? Really?”

Renya and Kazuya both simultaneously looked at Shion who had muttered that behind her shield, and then, after a while, they looked at each other without it being clear who had started.

“Hey, you heard your girlfriend. Let’s try it out.”

“Give me a break. As if anyone would be willing to test something like that, moron.”

“So you didn’t deny the part about me being your girlfriend!” Shion’s voice teeming with joy could be heard.

Hearing that, Renya almost stumbled while in the middle of evading. Kazuya didn’t miss that and mercilessly pulled the trigger of the revolver he had materialized in an instant several times.

The bullets, which were spat out of its barrel alongside dry banging sounds, all headed straight for Renya’s body without missing their aim, but right before reaching his body, they were crushed as if having hit some sort of hard surface in the air, and dropped to the ground.

As if to pay back tit for tat, Renya unleashed a chantless <Fire Lance>. Kazuya threw his revolver at it, and after both projectiles offset each other, he materialized somewhat bigger pistols in both his hands. They definitely had the shape of pistols, but they were so big that normal pistols would look like children’s toys in comparison. Getting a bad feeling about those, Renya quickly moved his body out of the muzzles’ direction before you could actually see the flash of light at the muzzles, signifying their shooting.

The bullets, which were fired with a much louder bang than the bullets before them, passed the place where Renya had stood a moment ago and hit a piece of rubble, displaying their penetrative force by gouging out two large holes where they impacted. This sight startled Renya, who had dodged these moments ago, and Shion, who was watching the fight.

“That’s not all!”

Kazuya’s eyes abruptly turned crimson as he prepared to follow up with further shots. Accompanying that, a scarlet, blazing magic lance manifested behind Kazuya.

“<Fire Lance>!? You can use magic?”

Without giving Renya the time to be surprised about what he was witnessing, the fire lance assailed Renya in accordance to Kazuya’s will. Renya cut it down with his drawn katana, just for Kazuya’s pistol bullets to tear through the space that was still filled with the embers of the scattered lance.

This time Renya just barely managed to somehow divert the bullets’ trajectories with the katana he had used to slash at the lance, but when he immediately tried to vacate his current location, he got obstructed by the explosion of a mine.

At once another fire lance swooped down on Renya who had come to a halt after stumbling a few steps.

“A joint usage of guns and magic!? How retardedly annoying is this!?”

After slashing the second lance apart and dodging the next pair of bullets, Renya took a peek at Kazuya’s state. Kazuya’s eyes were still crimson, but he could see how thin, crimson lines were slowly running down from the corners of his eyes, looking almost like tears.

It looks like the crimson coloring of his eyes stems from extremely bloodshot eyes, Renya guessed from Kazuya’s appearance while constantly cutting down the spells coming at him. That must be the reason for his red eyes. Also, the crimson tears must be caused by bleeding as the blood vessels inside his eyes seem to have ruptured for some kind of reason, I suppose. And if that’s the case, some sort of extremely taxing burden must be affecting Kazuya’s body.

In front of Renya, Kazuya spat red bile, which appeared to contain blood, at the ground while creating one fire lance after the other, and roared, “Fuck it! I still can’t catch up with his speed!?”

He caused directional mines to explode in succession, attempting to suppress Renya’s continuous dodging. On top of that, he unleashed fire lances, making them weave their way through the gaps between the mines’ explosions, and kept shooting the highly-powerful bullets, trying to barrage Renya’s general area with a multitude of attacks.

Although it only happened bit-by-bit, Kazuya continued to rob Renya of space to dodge and forced him to increasingly opt for defending rather than evading.

“Well, things aren’t getting easier for me either…”

Just because his mobility had been impeded, it didn’t mean that Renya couldn’t get through Kazuya’s attacks. Relying on his ridiculous amount of mana, he continued to take the mine blasts and magic flames from the front, repelling them while diverting the bullets, which were shot at him in the short gaps between the frontal onslaught, with his blade.

As he kept doing all that, he was starting to feel how his hands were gradually getting numb due to the impacts on the blade by the heavy bullets. And then, at last, Renya’s healing ability, which he possessed as a skill, began to be used for healing that numbness.

But even so, Kazuya didn’t ease up on his attacks.

“See?! Isn’t the situation gradually turnin’ shit for you!?” He yelled while throwing a grenade at Renya’s feet.

Renya suppressed it with defense magic right before it exploded, but using the gap of his attention being directed at the grenade, a fire lance grazed and scalded his left shoulder. Without even any spare time to grimace at the pain and burning coming from his shoulder, Renya saw several grenades being thrown at him all at once. As might be expected, even Renya had to leap back to open a bigger distance from Kazuya at this point.

“Don’t get carried away, brat!” Renya cursed with a voice full of irritation right after landing.

Immediately following, a white flame spear, which had been created by Renya as if to pool all his annoyance into it, stabbed the ground in front of Kazuya who had attacked him so fiercely that even Renya had no choice but to temporarily fall back.

 

 

It seemed as if Kazuya’s body might be swallowed by the steaming-hot, white fire, but the defensive magic, which Kazuya used at the very last moment, somehow endured the power of the flames, allowing him to get out of this without any burns.

During that shot break created by Kazuya’s reaction, Renya used the full extent of his healing ability to cure the remaining numbness in his arms and the slightly burned left shoulder. While healing, he tried to get a read on Kazuya’s state, just to end up groaning lightly due to what he saw.

The red tear-like liquid that had been trickling out of Kazuya’s bloodshot eyes had increased in quantity, and the lines tracing down his cheeks had become thicker as they dripped down towards his chin. Red spit, blended with blood, could be seen at the corners of his mouth. The nails on Kazuya’s fingers had dyed reddish brown, and the same liquid as the one from his eyes oozed out of the nails, staining his palms.

“You…that is…”

Even though Kazuya was clearly the attacker in the rally just now, one could only regard Kazuya as having suffered more damage than Renya, if you were to score their battle up until this point.

“It’s for the sake of butcherin’ a cheat like you! It’s only natural that I have to force myself a bit!”

At the same time of Kazuya’s shout, the scent, which would shortly shake Renya’s consciousness, drifted over from Kazuya once again.

A blinding flash of light came down from above Renya, who had immediately put himself on guard while covering his mouth, accompanied by a change in atmospheric pressure that caused his ears to ring.

“You can even use <Roaring Lightning>!?”

The fluctuation of his consciousness, brought about by the scent he was forced to smell before the strike, caused Renya’s evasion to be delayed by an instant. Even this small amount of lost time, which was so insignificant that he wouldn’t usually mind it, was more than enough for an artificial, magic lightning strike to reach its target.

Renya gave up on dodging and switched to defense, but the defensive barrier he deployed right away wasn’t sturdy enough to serve as perfect defense against the <Roaring Lightning> which had likely been prepared ahead of time. It was completely shattered without being able to hold it back for more than a faint instant in time.

However, using that split-second, which his defense magic had bought him, to the maximum, Renya avoided a direct hit at a timing which would undoubtedly spell a clean strike for any normal warrior. Even so, Renya’s body got scorched by the lightning that traveled all across his body, and white steam rose from him. Renya ended up going down on one knee at a place separated quite a distance from the hole gouged out by <Roaring Lightning>.

“No…follow-up attack, huh?”

Renya believed that the situation would have become rather hairy for him if another attack had followed, but Kazuya had suffered serious damage that didn’t fall behind Renya’s in the least.

The bloody tears were now streaming out of the inner corner of his eyes in addition to the outer corners, and the reddish brown dye of his hands had gained in intensity. After painfully coughing several times, Kazuya spat out a sticky phlegm on the ground. At this point, it had a viscosity and color which made it more appropriate to call it bloody mud. It almost felt like Renya could smell the iron rust all the way back at his position.

“Hey, I can’t believe it’s true, but you…”

He thought that Kazuya, going by the situation, might soon start his next attack. Recalling all the events leading up to this point, Renya called out to him.

Kazuya’s magic, which he didn’t exhibit during their last battle and which was just as bad as the weird scent that seemed to sway Renya’s consciousness, and the bleeding that started to occur on Kazuya’s body right after he began using those new abilities at the same time as his weapon materialization ability which he had possessed from the start.

Without expecting an answer from Kazuya, Renya voiced out the conclusion he had surmised from those circumstances, since he felt like he had to ask anyway.

“Did you absorb the ability of that Lost called Sazane or whatever…?”

If that’s the case, there are limits to forcing yourself, Renya assessed.

Without confirming or denying Renya’s question, Kazuya reproachfully glared at Renya with bloodshot eyes.

 

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“Our powers dwell in our hearts, or so it seems. Though I have no clue how it is for a shit like you.”

Kazuya pointed the muzzle of his pistol at Renya with a heavy, metallic sound. And despite having a big gun pointed at him, Renya’s eyes were focused on Kazuya’s chest instead of the pistol.

Earlier he should have penetrated Kazuya’s chest and stabbed his heart, but Kazuya had continued to fight while looking completely unperturbed. Back then Renya thought that Kazuya’s heart might be on the other side of the chest as it was rarely reported to occur amongst humans, but considering the words and powers Kazuya used afterwards, Renya had reached a single conclusion he didn’t really want to think about.

“Did you…have Sazane’s heart implanted into you?”

“It wasn’t anythin’ as sophisticated as transplantation, though.”

Opening up the front part of his school uniform’s jacket, Kazuya grabbed the collar of his shirt, pulled it down, and thus bared his chest. A large scar, looking like one big convulsion, was visible on his right chest. This immediately told Renya that someone had crudely opened up Kazuya’s right chest and done something to it.

“They salvaged only the heart from Sazane’s corpse, which that Karen guy had recovered, and stuffed it into me.”

“How reckless. Such absurdity might have passed thanks to the different world adjustment, but in the end, it’s way too reckless.”

A human heart wasn’t anything you could so simply pass around from one person to another. You had to clear various conditions like compatibility factor and so on. On top of that, it was an organ so sensitive that it still remained possible for it to fail even after the transplantation. Renya couldn’t believe that performing a heart transplant operation, which was considered complicated even in his former world, would be anything simple in this world that lacked the technique and precision tools to make a decent attempt at it, but for some reason Renya felt that the demon king and his surrounding might be at least able of pulling it off with a bullshit method like simply extracting the heart from Sazane’s corpse and stuffing it into Kazuya’s chest just like that.

And yet, although it was hard to describe Kazuya as lively and healthy right now, he was still alive without any problems, so Renya concluded that other worlds were just too incomprehensible.

In short, currently Kazuya’s original heart and the one plundered from Sazane existed in him at the same time. Thinking of it like that, Renya could come to terms with the phenomena that took place during the battle so far.

Even though he had stabbed Kazuya’s left chest and pierced his heart, it only caused little bleeding. He suspected that Kazuya didn’t die from it because the heart on the right side kept up Kazuya’s vital functions while the left heart healed up after having stopped due to getting damaged. Renya didn’t know how they had bestowed the ability to restore damaged organs and manipulate two hearts upon Kazuya, but since the demon king or someone else had gone out of their way to increase Kazuya’s hearts by one, it wouldn’t be odd for them to have granted him at least that much of ability. As for the restoration of damaged organs; that was something that could be achieved with magic arts, and didn’t necessarily require the bestowal of an ability.

And now, Renya looked at the boy in front of him, he’s in a state you can only describe as his body being riddled with injuries all over even though I only pierced his chest once and didn’t land any other decent attacks ever since.

Very likely Kazuya had released all abilities in both his hearts to oppose Renya. And due to the blood pressure triggered by the fierce beating of both hearts in response to that release, the capillary vessels at the extremities, like eyes and limbs, couldn’t bear the strain and started to bleed, Renya guessed.

The condition of having the blood vessels at hands and feet burst could still be regarded as a bitter price that had to be paid for an ability boost. But, if this went on, the veins in the brain would eventually rupture, resulting in Kazuya’s death or lifelong disablement, no matter how mighty a magic he might have.

“So you resolved yourself to suicide bombing, huh? That’s no way of fighting I’d praise, really.”

“Shut your trap! As long as I can get rid of you fucker, I’ll somehow handle the rest afterwards!”

Once again that scent was emitted from Kazuya’s body. Back when Sazane used it, it was an ability exercising such a strong effect that it could completely gain control of beings, regardless of whether they had a consciousness or not. But, probably because it was transplanted into Kazuya after its first user died, its effect seemed to have waned and now it lacked the force to put Renya under Kazuya’s control.

Yet, even Renya had his consciousness swayed faintly when forced to smell it. And that little sway of his concentration had the potential to become a fatal opening during combat.

As if having found a solution, Renya swung his left arm. The air, which got manipulated by the mana contained in that motion, turned into a big hand. Renya made it sweep across the area which had started to saturate with the scent, thinning its dispersion.

At the same time, Kazuya, who took the ensuing wind pressure head on, dropped the weapon he had held until now and guarded his face by crossing both arms.

“Fuck!”

It wasn’t as though Kazuya didn’t understand just how dangerous it was to take his eyes off his opponent at this moment. For this reason, he spread out a minefield around himself in order to prevent Renya’s approach while using his arms to cover his face.

He didn’t cause them to explode. After all, he had learned a little while ago that obscuring his own visual field with smoke and clouds of dirt would permit Renya to come closer.

Under normal circumstances, placing mines all around himself would have obstructed his own movements as well, but Kazuya’s ability wasn’t just capable of setting and removing mines, but he could even freely control the mine’s trigger by setting it to on or off. As long as he didn’t act in a way that was too dumb, he’d never get caught in the mines he set up himself.

While Kazuya got ready almost as if telling Renya to come if he dared, Renya further manipulated the air he had used to swipe away the scent, creating a maelstrom of air around Kazuya. Then he threw several <Flame Lances> at the base of what had turned into a tornado with Kazuya in its center. Pebbles and soil, which got gouged out by the spells, were swallowed by the tornado, stealing Kazuya’s visual field just like back then when Renya had stabbed one of Kazuya’s hearts.

Kazuya panicked from not being able to see things around himself anymore. At this rate, it was quite likely that Renya would unleash a thrust at him from outside the wind wall, just like earlier.

He had no clue just how much of an effect the minefield, which he planted in the ground, would have, but he couldn’t quite imagine that he could expect much of a shower of shrapnel unleashed by those anti-personnel mines, going by the fact that they weren’t able to stop Renya from attacking thus far.

In that case, Kazuya used Sazane’s power.

Even if the smell were to be swept along by the wind, it’d remain inside the tornado. If Renya cut through the minefield just like last time and managed to stab Kazuya’s chest, he’d be still forced to thrust his body inside the effective range of the scent for an instant. And although that scent had deteriorated, Kazuya also grasped that it did have a small effect on Renya, and as such he forecast that Renya’s attack might not be fatal after getting dulled down by him having his senses swayed by the scent.

Kazuya suspected that he probably wouldn’t need to endure for such a long time. After all, the airflow inside the tornado wound upwards, causing the dirt and stones contained in the wind to be pulled upwards and scatter before long. Which meant he’d be able to continue fighting as long as he could see things around him.

His thoughts were centered around stalling for time, but as if ridiculing all of Kazuya’s little plans, the ground at his feet shook violently.

“Wha-…is goin’ on!?”

Accompanying the tremors, the wind blowing blocking his view became even darker in color, blocking Kazuya’s visual field. Seeing black smoke mixed into it, Kazuya realized that something might have happened outside the wind cluster.

“Say Renya, is it fine like this?”

Renya, who had locked up Kazuya inside a tornado, had called out to Shion, who was lurking behind a nearby piece of rubble, and told her to throw the rubble in the vicinity at the ground near Kazuya. As Shion did as told, casually tossing debris of random sizes, the rubble burst the instant it landed on the ground, causing flames and black smoke to billow up.

Renya ordered Shion, who was surprised by the falling fragments of broken rubble, to continue with what she was doing. He also cautioned her to absolutely stay away from Kazuya’s location because something that would explode alongside the ground was buried over there.

“Keep the intervals between the thrown debris at a leisurely pace. I won’t finish my preparations in time if you make them explode all of a sudden.”

“Roger. At a leisurely pace, got it.”

Leaving breaks between each throw as instructed, Shion continued to trigger the buried mines. Meanwhile Renya activated his Inventory and took out firewood, leather, oil, or in short, everything that could burn. He stacked those things into a bigger pile near the tornado in a place clear of mines. In addition, he thrust corpses of enemy soldiers, which he picked up from the vicinity, into the hill. And as finisher, he poured large quantities of oil over all of it before setting it on fire.

The flames devoured the hill in the blink of an eye, blazing fiercely as smoke and fire raged high into the sky. The air heated by that conflagration and the black smoke rising from it was dragged into the whirling tornado and started to envelop Kazuya thanks to Renya’s steering.

“Renya? I finished throwing most of the rubble around me, you know?”

Around the time when Shion had almost finished getting rid of all mines in the area, the rubble she tossed around the tornado had reached a height reaching up to Renya’s chest. Now that it had turned out like this, Kazuya wouldn’t be able to easily rush out of his prison anymore.

And yet, thinking that Kazuya still might find an opening to get away, Renya further instructed Shion, “Next, pile up the rubble outside the tornado, please. If possible, it’d be great if it could look like a furnace.”

“This…no matter how you look at it, you plan to burn the one inside to death, don’t you?” Shion commented in astonishment while starting to create a wall out of rubble around the tornado.

Renya nodded once while adding more oil and burnable stuff to the blazing mountain.

“Rather than burning to death, it’d be baking them to death, I think? Or killing through suffocation…either way, that’s the gist of it, yeah.”

Even Renya couldn’t tell whether suffocation or heat would become the reason for Kazuya’s death. But, as long as it’d result in Kazuya passing away, the progress didn’t matter to Renya and he didn’t have any interest in it either.

“Bear it well in mind, Shion. Depending on the situation, stopping to move around in the middle of a battle often leads to one dying just like that. If you don’t want to die, it’s essential that you keep moving to places that put you in advantage over your adversary. A battle isn’t anything so simple that a fixed battery would work forever.”

“Okay? Somehow I get what you’re telling me, but…even so, this is a bit…”

If Kazuya hadn’t initially experienced his heart getting stabbed at the beginning, he might have tried to force his way out of the tornado, even at the cost of some injuries. But, because of that experience, he had discarded the idea of jumping out recklessly, and as a result of that, he was being surrounded by rubble so he wouldn’t be able to escape on top of having his sight stolen.

But, so far as it went, Kazuya held a reasonably high position in the demon king’s army. As such Shion couldn’t quite come to terms with the reasoning that you ought to cut off all paths of retreat after confining an opponent, who was very likely a leader-rank within the army, on top of defeating them by baking them like a slab of bread.

“No well, even I’d fight normally when facing an opponent who used normal weapons, okay?”

After looking at her expression, Renya somewhat sensed that Shion couldn’t come to terms with that conclusion, and thus started to explain in a way that sounded awfully like an excuse.

“But, fighting an opponent, who’s employing all those gun types, in a normal way would just make me a fool instead.”

“There’s some word I don’t understand in this, but I somehow get what you’re trying to tell me.”

“In the first place, it’s weird to have two hearts, right? Moreover, living on with one heart while recovering the crushed heart? There are limits to cheating. You’d get tired of going along with this, right?” Renya spat out but what Shion thought while looking at him was that Renya himself was probably a being which caused his enemies to get fed up with absurdly unfair strength.

But since Renya was a precious ally in Shion’s eyes and as it’d bear no meaning whatsoever, even if she voiced out that retort, she decided that it was unnecessary to expressly mention her own thoughts.

“Lopping off the head is a surefire method, but since it’s too much of a pain, burning him to death or suffocating him will also do as it’s unrelated to the condition of his hearts.”

“Okay, that makes sense.”

“If he breathes in a large amount of smoke, he’ll likely become unable to move. Afterwards we’ll keep the fire going for a while so that he’ll get properly cooked inside.”

“Then I’ll focus on piling up rubble so that nothing will be able to get out of there.”

“Yeah, please do.”

While being conflicted that she couldn’t show this to Giliel and the dragonoids who had left earlier, Shion kept creating a huge wall by stacking rubble atop rubble so that Kazuya wouldn’t be able to get out in an act of desperation.

Maybe the demon king army leader inside has already noticed his own situation, Shion pondered and further guessed, In that case, he should try to get out, even if he has to become somewhat unreasonable. Him still not coming out might mean he’s fallen in a situation similar to victims during a fire who were late to get out and have become unable to move after getting enveloped by flames.

“Hey, Renya, I think it’ll take several years after this battle has finished, but at some point troubadours or some such are going to sing about the battle between demon king and heroes.”

“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”

Renya blankly looked at Shion who broached this sudden topic without stopping the piling of rubble.

“I’m sure, the earl on the heroes’ side will also be included in those songs.”

“I don’t know about some earl or whatever, but it’d be a real nuisance.”

“But you see, making a song about a leader of the demon king army having been defeated by being baked to death or buried alive is kinda impossible, don’t you think?”

“Aren’t those things usually dramatized in songs to gloss them over? No, wait…” While throwing even more burnable stuff into the blazing flames, Renya continued as if having thought of something nice, “If that earl or whatever continues to fight in a way that doesn’t fit songs, no matter how you dramatize them, won’t it invite public executions for the troubadours if they include him in their songs? This sounds very worthwhile to consider.”

“Somehow I struggle to comprehend how my words led to such an outcome.”

While blowing wind into the flames and using a somewhat bigger cloth from his Inventory as fuel for the flames, Renya had apparently started to seriously ponder that idea. Shion couldn’t help but sigh deeply while continuing with her part of the work.

 

 

 

 

 

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